Thread by @tealou

Ask yourself: is it more likely that everything has changed and that you are old?

Or that nothing has, and some of us learn from history?

Thalidomide
Lobotomies
Vaginal mesh
Phentermine
Cymbalta
"Hysteria"

All those times where women & children were harmed by drugs en masse?

As a cohort of detransitioners initiate legal action, this will be another one.

Right side of history, indeed. I mean, it's not like it's happened before or anything you guys, and women are just hysterical anyway, amirite? Oh, wait, we have a treatment for that too. Burn them.

Are we all just dumb, bigoted and hateful?

Or, has what has ALWAYS been true (men hurting women & children, corporations being greedy, the working class being divided so they don't revolt), been given jet fuel by big tech, to create an uber-complex?

Come on.

Let's keep squabbling over nonsense, whilst Google A/B test all of it to see how we respond, how we are nudged, how we can be manipulated to be weaponised at the whims of their (real) customers: military, media, pharma, markets.

Come on, now.

These tribes are manufactured.

This has been my a-ha moment this week. I don't believe that "Wokism" is a phenomenon. I believe it is a product. And we're the raw materials.

Again, let's anchor what we know to be true. "Data Innovation Labs" indeed. I've been in these rooms.

It's a product.

Working hypothesis is that these labs have accidentally or deliberately manufactured a number of online cults. It started with marketing & "Life Events", & has evolved from there.

I've seen these labs & worked with these people. It's likely.

That's why we should always work from what we already know to be true, and build on that (and challenge it). Not just make it up. Why is it so important that we discard what we know to be true? Because we know.

Why are material socialists demonised alongside the Alt Right? Why are these ideas spreading so quickly by an organisation whose whole business model is to crack open our heads for behavioural data, who also (conveniently), owns the entire supply chain?

Just thoughts.

Why is everyone demonising Facebook above the others? And why do Twitter arbitrarily ban mid-level members of tribes at random?

They want us at war. They want us in a pressure cooker. They want to crack us so they know WHAT cracks us.

PS I didn't kill myself. haha

Why are thinkers - and I mean real thinkers - nudged into the fringes of these internet tribes? Because, if we do figure it out, we're easily rebranded as crackpots.

I mean, there's a fine line. Look at "hysteria", right? It's easy to make genuine dissidents into crackpots.

I'm not saying there aren't crackpots - but look at how many intelligent, rational people who question the neoliberal woke milieu have been pushed outside of the mainstream. They're all "Alt Right" (another product)

Just some ideas I am playing with.

But think. What's more plausible?

What we already know/have established as truth, which is mega corporations dividing us/seeing if they can get us to believe 2 + 2 = 5?

Or that 2 + 2 = 5 all along and we're all bigots?

Come on.

Yes I know, crackpot central over here. I look forward to my unpersoning at some point. Then I might actually get some work done. haha

Note: this isn't just about any one issue or any one tribe. I am jumping from micro to macro to expand some thoughts.

The "TERF Wars" are at the nexus of a lot of this. A perfect case study in Psy Ops of people who mostly agree, in all out war.

Why is that?

Who benefits?

It's funny how a true socialist critique of this situation provides the answers - and yet - the socialists are way too buy arguing over whether 2 + 2 = 5 that we are fracture and distracted beyond repair.

The people most likely to critique this are fighting the wrong enemies.

It's a very clever misdirection, isn't it?

Create (or encourage/support) something (Wokism) that splinters your critics into tribal warfare. This is some Art of War shit, man.

For the people new to me: I define "Wokism" as a distinct movement/ideology separate from the actual social justice theory underpinning it. I have critiqued it as a cult, but that's not right either. Data Product makes much more sense.

I initially thought that I was studying an online cult as the real threat to the left (have to focus on one, but there are many), but the more I research and read, and get back to basics re theory + professional UX experience... the enemy is... my own industry.

Yes, this realisation broke me.

This is how good people end up doing evil things.

They're not really included in the big picture until it's too late and they're in.

As of this week, I am retired from any data-driven marketing work.

Thanks for reading my weird-arse coffee thoughts. Like, Subscribe, and obey.

@threadreaderapp unroll please you sexy beast

And fuckit, if you wanna Patreon me patreon.com/tealou or Paypal paypal.me/kintsugidigital then you can do that too. It's an unfortunate evil but if you want me to develop my thoughts in a proper book or whatevs, this is how I gotta do it seeing as now I don't do anal(ysis)

Seeing as this thread appears to be traveling, I want to add that all I want is for people to see the manipulation that is occurring, deliberately preventing us from having genuine conversations & connections with each other. No matter your views, we should be able to talk.

I find it supremely odd that people are acting so viciously over things that would have been a polite policy discussion a decade ago. Why is that?

We are being nudged into tribal wars. Try to fight that & be aware of it, and we might get somewhere.